Gemini
by morning.chickenhead
Summary: When Mystique and Storm see each other, they are overcome with memories of their past together. Takes place during X2. Chapters alternate between characters’ point of view, and tell a story that is pre-X.
1. Diversion

**Disclaimer: I own nothing X-Men.**

**Diversion – **_Storm_

Calculating mind awhirl with instruction, question, and apprehension, my heart couldn't help but send my eyes astray. While other eyes stared, bewitched in concentration, into the steady flicker of the campfire, mine travelled sensually and uncontrollably over her stark body.

The sight brought back so many memories – and so much pain. Yet still I couldn't bring myself to tear my eyes from Mystique, even when she glanced my way with a sheerly blank look.

My heart stopped then in utter sadness, and I felt my eyes glaze over in a stupor of whiteness. The shining blue of her skin blurred together with the intricate golden patterns on her forehead, and when a spark of heat in my head indicated I was involuntarily conjuring a lightning storm, I had to force my eyes shut and sweep it away to the west.

Determined not to make my thoughts known, I rested my gaze back on the fire and solemnly listened to the others' voices: Jean, Erik, Logan…of the adults, of those of us who'd been there through it all as we "mutants" tried to come out in society, only Mystique and I lay silent. And I couldn't help but wonder if she was thinking about me, too. About me, her best friend, and her, my only friend, about how we fell in love and tried to fight the hardest battles together.

We were young, once, together. We were black, young black women, with secret feelings for other women. With secret, untamed powers. With sad, tired, and overworked mothers trying to give us the best lives they could. The counts against us in life were uncountable. In one sense we were lucky to be mutants, because our activism in their world eventually led us, young lower class black women, to prominent political positions in a way that may have proved impossible had we been relegated to the cruel human world.

Still, I couldn't help but feel queasy, remembering that once Mystique and I had led a movement together, a movement that failed in many ways yet succeeded in enough to make it worthwhile, and seeing now that we held ourselves back under the authority of older white men. In fact, I saw the way Mystique preened herself in the glory of being Erik's second-in-command, and lamented at the thought that second-in-command really meant _bitch._ The way she absolutely _purred_ under his attention – did she even still like women?

I shook my head to clear it of the heavy thoughts, and realized with a start that the others had scattered to their tents.

From a few yards away, Jean called to me. "You turning in soon, Storm?"

"Oh…yeah, I'm coming I guess," I replied non-committally. The sky was perfectly clear, and my stormy heart was drawn by the stark beauty, the strangeness of the twinkling stars, embedded in endless darkness. I wasn't really alone when I was with those stars.

Jean smiled sadly through the darkness – I heard it in her voice. "Well, put out the fire when you come in, if you don't mind."

"No problem." I found a somewhat dry grassy spot and sat down there as I tried to ignore Jean's disappearance into Logan's tent. I drew my knees up and under my chin, and gathered a tiny raincloud gradually over the fire pit. When it grew heavy enough, it began to cry.

And as the cloud's teardrops sizzled against the logs' heat, a teardrop of my own rolled down my cheek.


	2. Costume

**Disclaimer: I own nothing X-Men.**

**Costume** – _Mystique_

It nearly _killed_ me to be that close to her and not be able to sidle up and rip her clothes off in a fit of passion. Clothes aside, it really would be easier if she had just followed my lead and decided to show herself in her true form as often as possible. But of _course,_ under the _amiable_ leadership of the well-mannered, human-loving _Dr._ Charles Xavier, she was brainwashed to portray herself as much human as mutantly possible. And being human…meant being clothed.

Except, perhaps, in the privacy of her own chamber. Maybe she even stripped down before her mirror and caressed herself in a cyclone of self-love. Or…maybe she had another lover now. Probably a man. I had seen her eyeing me at the campfire, thinking stonily, _How could I have ever loved _that? And I saw how perfect was her body in tone, and her hair all in place, and her big, doe eyes – she was the picture of any man's dream, and a far cry from my league – little league, that is.

Well, I'd show her. And if I had to pick a man it would be Wolverine – the most animal of all those do-gooders, the most rogue. A rough-and-tumble type, nice and furry; he was bound to be good in bed. And the fact remained that attention from Storm no longer mattered. Our political differences and the expectations of the happy-happy-joy-joy mutant community kept us out of love. Only attention from a man would take me higher. And since I only ever failed when I tried with Magneto, Wolverine was my next best option.

Jean's body was a poor fit on me, though. Too tight, too tense, too tragic. I didn't last long in her, even when I had Wolverine under me, completely under my control.

I slipped.

He howled.

"I know what I want," I purred. "Do you know what you want?"

If not Jean, then young Rogue, perhaps? I flipped from body to body. A murmur in my heart advised me against taking on the next body. Maybe…Storm?

I loved Storm's body and being inside it. It was warm, safe, familiar. But it was my own body in which I slunk away when Wolverine sneered his disgust and rejected me, Mystique, in all my many forms.

Frankly, I too was disgusted by myself. Those sagging tits. That reptilian gait.

But I wear it to shock and disturb.

Wolverine was a bust – no matter. I was accustomed to being alone. I had been alone ever since Storm and I separated. The pain had been as if we were conjoined twins and had been ripped apart with a chainsaw, or guillotine, or chop-after-chop by a single-blade axe.

Now, I only put myself out there with those people I knew would reject me immediately.

That way it didn't hurt so much.


	3. Usual Tricks

**Disclaimer: I own nothing X-Men.**

**Usual Tricks - _Storm_**

I was shocked and disturbed when I looked down from the stars to see not Jean, but Mystique, emerging from Logan's tent. I gasped and shook my head hard. How could she taunt him that way?

She always was a trickster. Reminded of how she had pulled the wool over my eyes long ago, I closed my eyes and breathed in the freshness of the chill night air to keep me from crying. I never used to cry before Mystique, even when I was bullied horribly by the other kids at school.

Dylan, Mike, and Abby had me in a tight corner. Dylan's hands were locked on the collar of my dingy white dress shirt while the others followed his lead and took to picking imaginary lint out of my pigtails and off my rainbow suspenders.

"Now doesn't Little Miss Perfect look nice?" Dylan taunted, gripping my shoulders and thrusting me against some lockers. "Such a pretty picture of perfection. But wait, something is missing!" He let me go a moment and stood back to regard me, thumb and finger resting against his chin. "Ah, I know what it is. It's Miss Goody Two Shoes' goody-two-shoes!"

The next thing I knew, Dylan and Mike were holding me up while Abby quickly and slyly slid my Velcro running shoes from my feet. "See if you can find them, teacher's pet," she mocked, backing away, reading to run and hide them from me.

She and the snickering Mike and Dylan turned to flee with their prize, but were stopped dead in their tracks by something I couldn't see from behind them. I was too short. Abby dropped my shoes, one by one, as if in slow motion, and I scrambled to snatch them back. But when I looked up and noticed a tiny storm cloud began forming above each of their heads, I gulped. I was losing control of my abilities!

Usually I just left a wet spot on the floor in front of them to make them slip once they were well out of sight. I didn't want anyone to know what I could do. But maybe over the summer holidays I had lost my nuanced touch?

I backed up against the lockers, shoes in hand, and tried to will the clouds away. But nothing happened. Nothing happened except that a dump of rain splattered on Mike's head, then Abby's, and finally the ringleader Dylan's as he ran away screaming like an abandoned infant.

The cloud followed him, pouring all the way.

Now, in the gap left by Dylan, I could see who – or what – had been the cause of all this.

My heart hammered against my chest. I was looking at a mirror image of myself, pigtails and all.


	4. Stalling

**Disclaimer: I own nothing X.**

**Stalling – **_Mystique_

I could feel her eyes on me through the darkness as I came out of the tent. They burned a hole right through me to my very core.

That was the thing about Storm – even as I tiraded for the wearing of our true forms, she always solemnly believed that our true forms lay within.

I was never so sure I believed in a soul or anything like that. That was naïve human stuff.

Still, I was always drawn to her for her quiet faith and calm. We used to argue about the most effective ways to fight. I remember so clearly how, after she came to from the shock of seeing herself kick her bullies' asses that one day long ago, she said crossly, "I can fight my own battles."

So, while I was more of an in-your-face fighter, she preferred subtlety, and the control of not giving away information about who she really was.

Then again, I hid who I was for many years.

Considering she was the smartest kid in school, I was surprised it never occurred to Storm that I was a chameleon of sorts, mimicking her powers and her visage alike, rather than a long-lost twin, or identical stranger. With as little as Storm knew about mutantship, she may have even figured there was an army of Storms out there, with each soldier identical to us.

But she wanted a friend so badly, she didn't ask questions.

I altered my look after that first day of seventh grade, cropping off my hair and applying heavy make-up. No one but Storm saw us as identical, though teachers often did mix us up. Sometimes we would have fun messing with their heads, me purposely answering only to "Ororo," and her only to "Raven." We giggled hysterically later in the bathroom, where we ate our lunches to avoid the people who annoyed us.

It was one such time in the bathroom at lunch hour that would change our friendship forever in more ways than one.

Mid-way through eleventh grade, we were perched in our usual spots – on either side of one of the sinks on the counter, with a textbook as the table on which we laid out our peanut butter sandwiches. "Hey, watch this," I said deviously, nodding to the sink between us. I turned both the taps so the water gushed out. When I concentrated, the water drew itself into the shape of a powerful whirlpool. With a grin, I turned the whirlpool inside-out so it was facing upward with the eye level to our upper arms.

I pulled off a small piece of the crust from my sandwich and fed it into the whirlpool, which schlucked it in and spat it across the room into one of the stalls. I shrieked with delight and began to laugh my head off.

Storm laughed also, but she protested. "Cut that our, Rave! What if we get caught?" And she moved her hand toward the taps to shut off the flow of water.

But my hand was already there, blocking her. As she gave me an irritated look, our fingers brushed.

A jolt shot from my fingertip throughout my entire body. I looked and saw that Storm's irritation had melted away. The look on her face was one of wonder.

I quickly shut off the taps and let the whirlpool evaporate, then turned my attention to my sandwich.

"Um, I should get that piece of bread," Storm said, jumping down. I watched, shiftily so she wouldn't feel the eyes that were taking her in and the heart that was thumping hard in my chest, as she pushed back the stall door and disappeared behind it.

She didn't lock it though, and after a moment she said, "Hey Raven, can you help me with something?"

My mouth was so dry I could barely swallow the bit of sandwich that was inside, half-chewed, as I slid down and squeezed into the stall.

Storm was facing me, holding the bit of crust between her fingers. She held it up for me to see, then moved her hand and dropped the crust into the toilet.

Numbly, I watched it float, thinking I could make some joke about another whirlpool.

But Storm didn't give me the chance. She wove her fingers through mine, and pulled me close to her. Then, peering into her very own eyes, she leaned forward and lightly brushed her lips against mine. I shivered, and she looked at me searchingly.

Then without another pause for thought, a pause that might stop us, we were lost in each other. I was pressed up against the door, and my hands were in her hair. When we had to break to take a breath, we couldn't bring ourselves to separate our hot, throbbing mouths, so we parted our lips but kept our arched tongues touching at the tip.

We panted in rhythm for a moment. As we were about to return to it, Storm flickered open her eyes.

Suddenly she was yelping and backing away.

"Raven!" she cried. "What's happening to you?!"

I looked down the bridge of my nose and saw that it was blue. "Aw shit," I cursed.

And from my very first kiss all the way to my foray into Wolverine's tent, it was clear to me that when emotions ran high, I would be unable to contain myself in a form other than my truest one. Because at those moments, Storm might argue, my true, inner form was shining through the brightest.


End file.
